Global Warming

Greenland Ice Loss

A new study finds that Greenland’s ice sheet is disappearing faster and sliding into the sea more quickly than earlier predicted, threatening greater sea level rises. “It’s not something that we expected,” said Danish glaciologist Shfaqat Abbas Khan. ”Greenland and Antarctica’s contributions to sea level rise in the next 80 years will be significantly larger than we have predicted until now.”

The main contributor to Greenland’s ice loss is the increasing flow of two fast-moving glaciers, which drain about 12% of the interior ice sheet into the sea.

Earth's Thermostat

Earth appears to have a climate-stabilising process that keeps global temperatures within a habitable range over the long term. A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology looked at a process called “silicate weathering,” which over hundreds of thousands of years draws carbon dioxide out of the air and stores it in ocean floor sediment.

This helps explain how life on Earth has survived dramatic global temperature swings in the past. “On the one hand, it’s good because we know that today’s global warming will eventually be cancelled out through this stabilising feedback,” said study author Constantin Arnscheidt. “But on the other hand, it will take hundreds of thousands of years to happen, so not fast enough to solve our present-day issues.”

Emissions Rise Once Again

As leaders met in Egypt to find a way to curb carbon emissions, a comprehensive study finds that instead of declining, carbon emissions will reach yet another record high by the end of 2022. A report by the Global Carbon Project says there are no signs of the decline needed to meet the warming limit goal of 1.5 degrees C.

It projects fossil fuel CO2 emissions will rise another 1% worldwide this year, while China’s emissions are, in contrast, likely to drop by 1% in 2022. “If governments respond by turbocharging clean energy investments and planting, not cutting down, trees, global emissions could rapidly start to fall,” said Corinne Le Quéré of the University of East Anglia, who was part of the study.